Usually, in the third week of March, the issue of fatal accidents and mortality rates occupies a portion of the pages of Iran’s state-run media outlets. However, this year, on the eve of the Persian New Year, a regime media outlet ran an article titled, “17,000 Deaths in the Past 10 Months Due to Traffic Accidents,” in which it not only confessed to a 13% increase in fatalities and 60,000 disabilities resulting from accidents” but also issued a warning: “To reduce the number of disabilities caused by accidents, long-term planning is required, including not assigning vehicle registration numbers to those known as vehicles of death.” Vehicles of death is the nickname given to many of the vehicles manufactured by state-run carmakers.
One of the significant reasons for the tragic road accidents is the widespread corruption and large-scale embezzlements that have engulfed the automotive industry and its lucrative transactions. The mafia associated with the automotive industry has infiltrated high-ranking regime institutions, particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the extensive regime.
Some documents released by the dissident group “GhiyamSarnegouni” demonstrate how everyone from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to the leaders of the armed forces, the IRGC, the government, and the regime’s parliament are involved in the automotive mafia. This regime’s corruption has repeatedly surfaced during internal disputes and conflicts within the regime.
One of the documents published by GhiyamSarnegouni is a “highly confidential” letter from Major General Mostafa Izadi, Deputy of Strategic Affairs and Supervision in the General Staff of the Armed Forces, to Khamenei. In a section of this letter dated October 14, 2023, which was designed to undermine the influence of the IRGC’s rivals, it states: “It is necessary to assist other forces and intelligence agencies in neutralizing groups with a criminal record and misguided thinking. By making necessary changes in the Iran Khodro and SAIPA Development Organization, managers who believe in indigenous automotive technology should be appointed as replacements.”
In another published document, Mostafa Izadi writes to regime president Ebrahim Raisi, using the tactic of “self-sufficiency” and saving from “dependent industries” to further encourage the production of death vehicles. In a the letter, dated August 31, 2023, Izadi states: “How can we support the automotive industry and its dependent industries in the current circumstances and control and eliminate the crisis in this regard?”
The remarks of Jalal Rashidi Kouchi, a member of the Majlis, sheds light on the control and infiltration of this mafia within the IRGC, the government, and other components and organs of the clerical regime.
On February 16, state-run Rokna news agency, published a short video of this conversation:
Host: What was the highest bribe that has been offered to you?
Rashidi: 150 to 200.
Host: Billion?
Rashidi: [Yes], to go for an interview and say that the car import story is not true.
Host: Is it true that going to the parliament has such benefits?
Reshidi: For someone who pursues it, yes. It’s much more than you think.
We can see that the IRGC, as the godfather of the automotive mafia, both imports vehicles, stops imports, and in the blink of an eye, increases the prices of death vehicles by tens of million rials, playing with the lives of thousands of passengers on the roads.
On February 13, the state-run Jahane Sanat newspaper, in a report titled “The Government Turns Car Imports into a Tool for Rent Distribution,” wrote, “Since restrictions were lifted from car imports, the Ministry of SMT [Industry- Mine –Trade], has made many promises regarding imports, the most important of which was the importation of 200,000 foreign cars by the end of May 2023. During this period, officials of the Ministry of Industries, Mines, and Trade made promises on various platforms that they intend to sell imported cars to all people; cars that were supposed to be delivered to applicants three months after registration. Based on this, 34,000 people registered in the Ministry of Industries, Mines, and Trade’s plan to receive their imported cars within a three-month period. These individuals froze 5 billion rials in the name of the Support Organization in their bank accounts, but now, as nearly a year has passed since the initial registration, approximately 4,000 people have withdrawn from the plan, and almost a thousand people have received their cars, while the rest are still in a state of uncertainty.”
On May 15, 2022, the state-run Bahar News website quoted the former head of the regime’s traffic police that previously stated: “There is a mafia behind the automotive industry that supports it and forces the country into silence. This mafia is so powerful that it only occasionally allows criticisms of automakers to remain at the level of words and speeches, ensuring that no practical action is ever taken against automakers in the country.”
Of course, the former head of police never said, and does not say, that the astronomical profits of this mafia are stained with the blood of the 17,000 people killed in the past 10 months. They do not reveal that the result of this profiteering is tens of thousands of disabled individuals, thousands of grieving families, and talents stifled in the vehicles of death. The reality is that this profitability is based on the currency of repression and the massacre of people on the streets and warmongering in the region.
